This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Ex-PH2

  • Monday’s Bits of This ‘n’ That

    It seems that Fatty Kim da T’ird  is getting too froggy for Pres. Trump, who is increasing efforts to cut off his cash supply/flow ASAP, by sending US Ambassador Joseph Yun to SEAsia to get some cooperation from those countries in cutting off their aid to the tinpot dictator while Secy/State Rex Tillerson asks for global action to stifle the little twerp.

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/829457/north-korea-donald-trump-kim-jong-un-usa-missile-sanctions-money-finance-china

    Embedded in the article are two links to other articles regarding JoyBoy’s attempts to weaponise diseases, and the USA’s increase of cash for missile defense against the Norks.

    There’s also a link to a brief article about Boris Johnson’s reaction to the Norks. He wants to ‘make them see sense’.  http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/829535/North-Korea-Kim-Jong-un-Boris-Johnson-Syria-Assad-EU-sanctions

    That’s a giggle: make a psychotic megalomaniac see some sense? Okay, sure, Boris. I know you mean well, but I’m stuck over here in Reality Land. Li’l Kim will tell you ‘Sense? Okay, Brit guy.’ and wait until your back is turned, then plunge that blade of his deep into your back. (Boris is now the UK’s Foreign Secretary.)

    Meantime, Angela Merkel is ‘stunned’ by Brexit, and more determined than ever to make the EU work. http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/829523/Angela-Merkel-Brexit-European-Union-Germany-France-Emmanuel-Macron-Theresa-May

    She’s quite sure that ‘the decades of peace and stability would not have been possible without the European Union’.

    Angela, you ignoramus, the Common Market (shortly thereafter known as the EEC) was formed in 1957.  It was not the EU. Its purpose was to regulate development of nuclear power and trade relations in Europe. It was not meant to create a ‘One Europe’ nation. That’s what Hitler wanted, but he used tanks and infantry and missiles to try to do that, and he failed. The Common Market worked a whole lot better.

    The European Union did not exist until 1993, following ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. You need to bone up on history a little bit… no, bone up a LOT. Almost all of what’s wrong with Europe now is your complete lack of understanding anything about Europe, at all. Thanks to you and your imbecilic ideas, people in Germany are going without heat and electricity because they can’t afford it any more, and the entire European continent is awash in Very Bad Guys who want to slaughter you in your sleep, among many, many other things.

    In other news, Venezuela is still imploding. Not sure how long before it becomes a true black hole in the physics sense, but it’s close.

    And Santiago, Chile reports an early snowfall and some serious cold moving in, which means that the ski resorts will probably open early. Chile has become a mecca for ski bums and other snow-loving peeps, as has New Zealand. I’m waiting for someone to propose a cross-country ski race on  Larsen C, that big chunk of ice that finally cut loose from the Antarctic peninsula.

    And it looks like more rain in my kingdom by Tuesday. My sunflowers look good.  Y’all have a good week.

  • WOLF!!!

    Related image

    I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to the twitterpating going on in the media, the WH or otherwise. But it appears to me that the liberal side of the journalistic bench is more interested in trying to destroy the United States government by bullying Trump than they are in reporting the real news.

    I think that part is quite plain. It’s six months into his administration and they still haven’t unseated him. It must hurt their feelings that they can’t bully him into leaving on a Friday. Filing and reporting fiction as news is merely one symptom of their spoiled brat behavior. They want to be in control, but are not, and they are showing us how butthurt they are about it. If you can’t see that, you’re not paying attention.

    I know how much the lefties despise him, and how much the lefty media really hate his guts. They’re as transparent as glass about it. But the leftist media don’t have to like him. A critic with opposing views is a legitimate stance. It’s as necessary to have critics as it is to have ‘all ahead full’ on the dial.

    In a free society like ours, the liberal media have the right, as observers, to criticize his policies and his rather boorish behavior. I wish he’d put a sock in it, myself. They don’t have the right to lie their asses off about him just to get attention and try to destroy his administration. It tells us how desperate they are to get rid of him by the use of verbal assassination and imaginary tales of villainy.

    He isn’t Richard Nixon. No matter how much they want to turn him into Tricky Dick, it ain’t gonna happen.

    Mr. Trump is a lot tougher than they are or could possibly imagine being. They think he’s as weak as they are. Unless I miss my guess, he’s laughing up his sleeve at them, and letting the rest of us know by all that twitterpating. Since I don’t do twitterpating, I miss that silly stuff unless someone posts it somewhere. He’s making very good use of their own weapons against them and they can’t stand it. It’s the ‘right back at ya’ response. It must hurt to be beaten at your own teenybopper gossipy little bitch game.

    The conniving by the leftist media to destroy Trump is a symptom of  their growing desperation.. If that weren’t so, would they be making up stories about him and those around him that are obvious fiction, or engaging so heavily in character assassination by publicly perjuring themselves?

    They’ve forgotten one simple rule that they should have learned, but ignored or dismissed: in a free country, freedom of speech and freedom of the press do not give them the right to lie about someone and state it as fact just because they hate him, especially when there are enough people watching their nonsense who can easily and quickly debunk it with real-world facts. Those who are checking and debunking leftist media’s reports are the curbstrap on the bit that gets the runaway horse’s attention.

    This is nothing more than grade school bullying by a bunch of little kids in adult bodies. Not one of them has had an original idea since they left 4th grade. They are stupid enough to believe their own drivel, and think everyone else is as stupid as they are, which is a massive failure on their part. Their ‘mob action’ is less about reporting than it is about being in the spotlight.

    I said several months ago, before the November elections took place, that at some point, the political pendulum had gone as far to the left as it could. I said it would start to slowly swing in the other direction. In physics, Newton’s laws of motion hold true. They also hold true in the political arena. I was right. When Trump was elected, the political pendulum began its swing toward the right and will eventually center itself.

    Remember the kid who cried ‘wolf!’?  The leftist media are doing a fine job of discrediting themselves with their antics and fallacious reporting. If they do enough fake news reporting, then when one of them stumbles across something real and reports it, no one will believe them.

    The leftist media are not paying attention to what is really important: the pending recession that I brought up yesterday. It can put a lot of overpaid people out of work, including them. And frankly, I would not mind seeing a long line of them bunched up behind each other at the entrance to a Depression-era soup kitchen, like those guys  lined up in the photo.

  • Something To Chew On After Fireworks….

    The history of the Sears & Roebuck catalog is here:  http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/history.htm

    First published in 1888, it evolved into the ‘everything’ catalog. House plans and kits were introduced in 1930. Mail order chickens were also introduced in 1930, and other farm animals, too, such as draft horses and riding horses and equipment..Any kind of livestock came directly from the breeder, through Sears and Ward’s. You could literally order anything available from these companies. This was the post-Civil War era, which is also referred to as the Gilded Age.

    This article on the US economy prior to and during WWI  http://eh.net/encyclopedia/u-s-economy-in-world-war-i/  includes info on taxes, what they covered and how high they went, in regard to real income in 1916.

    If there was a mild recession prior to WWI, was it truly ended by the US entry into the war in Europe, with the US government raising cash through the newly-created Federal Reserve? That was followed by a rapidly rising economy, a regular boom-time post-war job market, and a massive implosion in 1929 in the stock market (and there were warnings about it well ahead of the Crash).

    The question comes up logically: does what happened 90 to 100 years ago parallel the present?

    Financial markets everywhere crashed eleven years after the end of WWI. It sent economies everywhere into a downward spiral that took up to 10 years to recover, but was it prefaced by the US government’s bolstering increased production, including energy production, for WWI?  Note that WWI was the first time mechanized artillery (tanks) and aerial bombing (two-seater airplanes) were used. If energy production supports, boosts, and/or parallels a rising economy, that could explain the boom-bust cycle that began after WWI and ended in the fall of 1929.

    I think there is a parallel here, but it’s not quite as plain as the most recent government bailouts have been. The probability is that, with this predicted recession looming, we’ll see a long, slow slide into it everywhere, including Europe, the UK, China, Japan, and Russia.

    Can it be falsely propped up by another global war? And should that be done? In our current, very peculiar political and economic climate, it might be a bad idea.  Aside from ISIS, which is crumbling now, and a bunch of unwashed lefties, who is a tangible enemy?

    When energy prices/consumption/production drop too low for producers to sustain employment, flagging recession and lost jobs/wages follow.  The original article is at Gail Tyverberg’s blog:  https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/07/02/the-next-financial-crisis-is-not-far-away/

    From Tyverberg’s article: “In fact, affordability is the key issue. When the world economy is stimulated by more debt, only a small part of this additional debt makes its way back to the wages of non-elite workers. With greater global competition in wages, the wages of these workers tend to stay low. The limited demand of these workers tends to keep commodity prices, especially oil prices, from rising very high, for very long.”  Plainly, bailouts are simply more debt.

    In plain words, an increase in energy production is directly tied to jobs, wages, and a rising economy.  Major warfare includes increased energy production. ‘Stimulated by more debt’ refers to government bailouts, engineered to artificially prevent economic crises from occurring.

    From Bloomberg News: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-30/china-still-poses-a-risk-as-source-of-the-next-u-s-recession

    China’s debt load is considerably higher than that of the US at 250%. This is supported by the following article from Market Watch, back in March 2017:  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-where-the-next-financial-crisis-is-lurking-2017-03-20

    Quote from Market Watch article:  “ China’s national and provincial governments have subsidized inefficient state-owned enterprises and exporters with easy credit and propped up growth through excessive borrowing for wasteful public works and urbanization projects. Government deficits are estimated at least 15% of gross domestic product, and cumulative public and private debt at 250%.”

    From Anne Pettifor, back in January 2017:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-economy-economists-predict-financial-crash-recession-2008-michael-fish-austerity-cant-solve-a7513416.html

    Basically, the problems that caused the 2009 financial market crash and recession were not repaired or erased. They were blunted and bandaged by government bailouts. They still exist and will cause another recession. If we view this correctly, precisely the same signs that should have alerted people to a coming financial crisis in the mid-2000s are showing up again.

    New home construction has returned to the overpriced McMansion state; rents in large cities such as New York and Chicago have skyrocketed; public transit fares have increased substantially; local taxes have increased as well. Food prices in large cities, e.g., Chicago, have risen not just because of production, location, and transportation costs, but also because taxes on products have risen. This is why I shop where I can get better prices for the same products I’d buy at larger chains. I notice in the sale papers that Jewel, which is owned by Albertsons, has dropped its prices on some produce items – but not all – and cut full-time jobs to part-time only, back in 2009, when the market crash occurred.

    Bailouts were the answer then, but we simply cannot afford bailouts and handouts any more.  Those are a huge mistake that will cause more financial harm than anything else, including the predicted loss of funds in the Social Security Trust Fund and the constant manipulations of military retirement pay and veterans’ benefits, among other things.

    The symptoms of a coming recession are clear. They are the same as they were in the 2000s, and are being ignored by the general public, by people who should have learned the first time around, but apparently did not. If this looming recession is exacerbated by the ignorant silliness of demands for higher wages by low-level labor, those people may find themselves out of work all over again and other people will find themselves using whatever savings they may have set aside, solely to pay the bills and put food on the table.

    The mordant idiot spendthrift who was in the White House for eight years had more than enough time to solve the problem, but did not. He left it for the next sucker to get the job, and probably snorted with laughter on the way out the door, so I blame him for this next financial crisis. Frankly, I don’t think he gave a damn.

    Whatever is going to happen is going to be a long, slow slide and it won’t be just us. The UK is also facing it, thanks to Gordon Brown’s ineptitude. Europe has had Merkel to drag it down into the mud with her dimwitted policies. China, as I said above is, quite frankly, in worse financial trouble than the US and may have no way to get out of it.

    And the Queen Bee of financial stupidity? Venezuela. What has happened down there was inexcusable, but as Pettifor says, it was driven by ideology and stupidity, not by a sense of how to manage money and prepare for a financial crisis.

    Boom is always followed by a bust.

    Trump will get blamed for this mess, of course, even though it was not of his making. It will take too long to correct Da Stupid Mistakes that were made before he was elected. They could have been resolved by his predecessor and were not, because social justice policies and bailouts were more important, no matter how damaging they may be in the long run, to future generations.

    The same thing holds true in all other countries that will be affected by this. As I indicated at the beginning of this article, it was the United States’ entry into the War in Europe that stimulated the US economy by the creation of the Federal Reserve, and the use of an account for the US government to withdraw funding to pay for war materiel production and wages, which included increased energy production. It was a government-sponsored economic boom early in the 20th century, funded by borrowed money to the tune of $40 billions.

    Unfortunately, that boom faded and a panic and crash followed in 1929, which fed into a worldwide economic Depression that drove Germany and the rest of the world into the same financial crisis now going on in Venezuela and beginning to show itself elsewhere. The United States’ entry into World War II followed on the heels of government-sponsored work programs, e.g., CCC, PWA, and WPA.

    World War II was bad enough. Was it the last War of Conquerors? Do we cascade into warfare to solve this problem?

    It appears that we may be heading in that direction.

  • The Perceptivity of the Pseudonymic Integrity of the Peer Review Process

    There seems to be some misconstrued perception  of the intrinsic value of the peer review process, prepublication or otherwise. In fact, peer review is not a requirement for publication under any circumstances. It is fascinating to observe people with presumptive and uninformed notions tumble all over themselves, and trip themselves up, over the preposterous notion that peer review is a requirement for validity or for publication.

    In an effort to clearly demonstrate the lack of real-world, hard-nosed value of the peer review process, two authors engaged themselves in the time and effort required to produce an article for prepublication peer review.

    If you take the time to read their article, which was published after peer review, you begin to understand why that phrase conjures up a vision of two guys at a urinal discussing football scores while they gaze at the tiles on the walls instead of engaging in penis measuring.

    The article to which I refer was titled ‘The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct’. Their report on the valueless process of peer review is at this link.

    http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

    These two post-doctoral operatives were kind enough to archive a pdf of the article itself, for your enjoyment.

    http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/conceptual-penis/23311886.2017.1330439.pdf

    Note that the entire article was, in their words, ‘stuffed full of jargon’, nonsense, pejorative slang for genitals, and so-called ‘red flag phrases’, which was essentially a collection of contemporary buzzwords and vocabulary quickly and easily recognized for their alleged ‘trigger-reactive’ misusage. They used every possible means of distortionate vocabulary available in the English language to achieve their goal. Some examples include ‘toxic hypermasculinity’, ‘man-spreading – akin to raping the environment’, etc.

    The abstract for the hoax paper is as follows:

    Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

    It was a hoax, created with the sole intent to expose the idiocy embedded in the misperception that peer review adds true value to publication.

    Since peer review is a prepublication courtesy, not a requirement, it is plain to anyone with a working brain that the process of peer review has acquired the precise value of my previous example: two guys chatting each other up at the urinal.

    This is a prime example of the lack of value of so-called peer review.  Where it should have some conscious value as a feedback mechanism, it is, instead a joke on the ignorant and uninformed twits who are now in a feeding frenzy over the ‘not peer-reviewed’ status of a study on wage levels and resultant economic impacts in the Seattle, WA, area.

    Obviously, in the title to this article, I intentionally pursued the use of polysyllabics, whether or not they were correctly employed, simply as a means of pressing home the point, that peer review is becoming overrated, in many instances being nothing more than a brief perusal of a submitted paper. Some people are easily impressed

    Maybe it would have more value if peer review was a dick-measuring contest.

  • Codebusters

    Despite the recent allegations that the Russians were attempting to corrupt voting software at a specific company (and failed), they are not the world’s best hackers or cyber attackers, at all.

    No, that dubious honor belongs entirely to the Norks.  Per the article in Foreign Policy’s most recent edition, you barely even need a computer to do what the Norks do to get what they want. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/north-korea-proves-you-barely-need-computers-to-win-a-cyberwar/

    To quote the authors (Moore and Corrado) of that article: “Evidence is mounting that the perpetrator of last month’s WannaCry cyberattack that paralyzed 300,000 computers in 150 countries was North Korea’s hacker army, a highly sophisticated network of hackers trained to compromise foreign militaries, corrupt network systems, and conduct cyberheists of financial institutions. It may seem strange that a country as underdeveloped as North Korea has decided to invest its meager resources in such high-tech capabilities. It shouldn’t. Cyberspace has long been North Korea’s preferred battlefield precisely because of its own developmental weaknesses.”

    They go on to say that Norkiland uses the Chinese method of finding the best candidates to be hackers, termed ‘a thousand grains of sand’.  This was also the Soviet method for winning in Olympic sports.

    In 1986, North Korea hired 25 Russian instructors in cybernetics (computer science, to the uninformed) and subsequently began identifying grade school-level children to train in fine art of hack attacks.  There are at least 5,900 skilled cyber hackers working for the Nork government on nothing else.

    Norkiland is also the prime suspect in the recent theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City.

    They are, in fact, suspects in such things as a 2003 major power outage in the US, and may even be the source of the fake FBI Moneypak ransomware virus which hit a lot of people starting in 2012, including me. That virus cost me a pretty penny to have it removed from my computer, and yes, I did call the FBI and yell at them about it. They were quite humble and told me to report it, which I did. But it’s still going on, attacking Androids and other platforms. If the Norks were not behind it, I’d be surprised.

    Per this Telegraph article, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-northkorea-exclusive-idUSKCN18H020  Norkiland is also the suspect in shutting down South Korea’s reactor in 2014. Of course, the Norks emphatically deny that.

    There are apparently 11,000 domains with various forms of scareware and ransomware in existence, but if you have a small army of dedicated cyber pirates at your command in your very supremely ultra-secret Unit 180, the number of domains they have to monitor is less than two apiece.

    The Norks are better at cyber and malware attacks than they are at arms and armor, although that is finding its feet. For this reason alone, my response to people who screech ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!”**  is ‘Look further east.’ The Norks are more likely to rule the world through their skilled cyber hackers than by missile attacks on their neighbors. If any country can hack the US voting system, it’s the Norks. If they can hack banks, they can also hack our defense system. If that doesn’t scare you, you’re numb to reality.

    On a final note,  I will add that since Fatty Kim da T’ird, aka NDtBF, has this fascination with things that go ‘BOOM!’, he may not view hack attacks as the best thing since sliced bread for his purposes.

    He’s wrong. Things that go ‘BOOM!’ can backfire on you. He should heed what Daddy Kim did: use the back door. His neighbors and US have Bigger Booms than his.

    **See the movie. It’s a hoot.

  • Your Monday Morning Update from Norkiland

    170403-N-NI812-226
    PACIFIC OCEAN (April 3, 2017) Ships assigned to the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group participate in a strait transit exercise in the Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Ian Kinkead/Released)

    There is much to be said about keeping a close eye on your neighbor, especially if you suspect that he’s got a screw loose.

    In the continuing story of the hermit kingdom known as North Korea, NDtBF continues to make threats against his neighbors, including Japan, and the USofA, both verbally and by launching missiles. This most recent tantrum of his has to do with our successful anti-missile missile test in the Sea of Japan.

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/812889/North-Korea-USA-live-updates-latest-news-Kim-Jong-un-Donald-Trump-missiles-war-sanctions

    Those war exercises we’re engaging in, which we do on a periodic basis anyway, are upsetting his apple cart.  There’s a nice photo of US and Japanese bird farms engaged in exercises in the slide show in the attached article.

    Per the Express/UK article, Norkiland – meaning Fatty Kim da T’ird – has rejected the latest sanction from the UN and is hellbent on developing its nuclear program.

    El Supremo Kim Abondanzaa is also making the Russians nervous, per Deputy Defense Minister Fomin. He considers the missile tests to be a direct threat to Russia. They’re willing to sell armored tracked vehicles to him, but they don’t want to have to deal with his antics, any more than anyone else does.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/06/04/russia-says-north-koreas-nukes-are-direct-threat.html

    An even bigger issue is that Japan is now holding evacuation drills because of Lord Satsquaasher’s missile tests.

    http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/north-korea-missile-tests-japan-holds-evacuation-drills/news-story/29de18dc4ae45a84c15c5323b29aa977

    It’s bad enough that the nation of Japan is still rebuilding after the 2011 earthquake. The school kids have been doing earthquake drills since Day One. But that was Mother Nature moving the furniture around. Not much you can do about it, and Japan has done a fine job of recovery in the areas of Honshu that were so devastated.

    But this? This Inglorious Fat Little Basterd aiming a rocket at Japan as a test under the pretense that he’s being threatened by Whoosies and Whatsises is not just unacceptable, it’s ridiculous.

    Seriously, if he’s making the Russians nervous and pissing off the Chinese, he is not following in Daddy Kim’s footsteps, nor in Grandpa Kim’s, either, and he won’t get the big 150-foot copper-colored statue in Pyongyang Square.

    Someone please tell me the little bugger hasn’t reproduced yet.

  • Put Up Or Shut Up

    Regarding James Clapper’s claim of Russian interference in the US elections last fall:  http://thehill.com/homenews/news/335575-clapper-aggressiveness-of-russian-interference-in-election-unprecedented

    Mr. Clapper makes avowed statements that RT, a Kremlin-based media outlet, was among those organizations ‘hacking’ the elections. He does everything but pound his shoe on the table, like Nikita Krushchev did on his visit to the UN.

    To quote him: Clapper noted that the Russians have long tried to interfere in presidential elections, but characterized their 2016 efforts as the most aggressive and direct.

    “There’s been a long history of … interference, going back to the Soviet era, in our elections,” Clapper said. “But never ever has there been a case of the aggressiveness and the direct actions that the Russians took and their conduct of a multifaceted campaign to interfere with our election.” – per the article.

    Okay, fine. I want to see documentation.  Go ahead and talk about it, Jimmy, but until or unless you produce actual documents that prove your case, you are just blowing smoke out of your ass.  If you’re talking about it publicly, especially to the media’s most notorious fake news outlet CNN, then not one bit of it is classified.

    NONE OF IT, CLAPPER   NONE OF IT.

    Cough up the proof, verified proof. or shut your mouth. If you don’t, you’re just a sore loser and nothing else.

    PUT UP OR SHUT UP, CLAPPER.

  • Why Is There No Mini Kim Cheese?

    Not to spoil your morning coffee break or anything but NDtBF a/k/a Fatty Kim da T’ird has gone and tested another missile, just to impress us that he means bidness.

    Per the article, with the most recent test launch by Mr. No-Dongatall, the G7 have agreed to increase sanctions against the real-world version of Duloc.  Lord Sitsquaad the Squat is shown in a screen shot of a Nork newspaper in the linked article watching his latest missile, what appears to be a Hwasong-12 (Mars-12) strategic ballistic rocket, but could have been a Pukguksong or a Pukkuksong. I can’t keep their music titles straight any more.

    Note that General Ri and other nukey-birds are present in most of those photos with The Glorious Leader & Cheesesampler Supreme. The Nork Nukers are the three men believed to be the top officials in the country’s rapidly accelerating missile program. They are Ri Pyong Chol, a former top air force general; Kim Jong Sik, a veteran rocket scientist; and Jang Chang Ha, the head of the Academy of National Defence Science, a weapons development and procurement center.

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/810236/north-korea-latest-news-live-donald-trump-kim-jong-un-usa-missile-nuclear-war

    Japan’s Prime Minister Abe is taking it seriously.  At the G7 Summit held in Sicily this past week, he said that the threat has reached a new stage. He has a bit more to worry about than we do, since most of those missiles have been aimed across the Sea of Japan, right at Japan, specifically at Honshu Island, which suffered massive, devastating damage from the quake and horrendous tidal wave in March 2011. The US sent Japan a THAAD system a few weeks ago. China objected to it, but from the most recent reports I’ve seen, China is getting fed up with its squatty neighbor to the south.

    Last week, I reported that the Nork government (meaning NDtBF) had started a ferry service to Vladivostok, which followed on the heels of news that a shipment of tracked armored vehicles and artillery had been transported to Vladivostok. No coincidence there. None at all. Nope.

    On our side of the fence, USS Nimitz will be joining USS Ronald Regan and USS Carl Vinson, now at station near the Korean peninsula. I gather from the Express/UK article that this will be a live fire exercise opportunity to test our ability to shoot down an ICBM.  That should upset Norkiland’s wine and cheese cart a little bit.

    I’ve said this before: I may point and giggle, but when a nutball makes poisonous toys and throws them at his neighbors, I still take it seriously. If he shows up in my neighborhood, I’m getting out the fly swatter and hornet spray.

    Stay tuned.